Jeovani is the youngest of four brothers, and he lives with his mother and stepfather. I met him as a little baby and it´s been great to see him grow up. He hasn´t had the happiest childhood I would say, but he is an amazing kid. His parents work most of the day and he spends a lot of his after school time at Club 121 or hanging out with us Youthfornt Croc staff members. We can say Jeovani is one of our regulars, he comes by often and he´s been showing up at our doors since the day he could walk. I remember one summer when he was about 18 months that he would show up after or during the morning meeting and spend all day hanging out at the staff quarters until his mom would come back from work at 6 p.m.. When he started 1st grade, the troubled kid started showing, he did not listened to the teacher and since he was bigger, stronger and smarter than most of the other kids, he would beat them up if they didn´t do what he wanted. He got kicked out of school for the first time at the end of the year; we manage to get him back in school and finish first grade. He also attended club 121, it was a challenge for all of us teachers. I personally had to take him home more than a dozen times, and almost every time he would come back to the church and he´d throw rocks at us from the courtyard. But by the end of the year we were able to come to the agreement that, whenever he was upset he could decide to go home on his own. So almost every day he would put away his books and go home before class was over.
A year later we moved out of the church and rented a house a few houses down Jeovani´s house and he figured it out pretty quickly, so he would show up almost every day to hang out and ask for money. So Jake Taylor (a former staff member) started hanging out with him and soon they became good friends. They would do some carpentry work or bake some banana bread or play board games. One day Jeovani showed up and he asked if we could give him a Bible. Jake told him that if he read a chapter a day and would come to the house and talk about it, he´d get a coke. So he got a Bible and read a chapter (by this time Jeovani was 7 or 8 years old, but he was already a good reader), and the next day, and the day after and so on. They did that for a while, and then Jake left (they keep in touch), and time went by, we still see Jeovani almost every day.
So one day I was making a small table for our copy machine and he showed up and we started chatting and then he asked me if I could make a table for him, and I said that we would make it together next week. So he showed up a week later at the time we had set, and we started working on the table. We where using power tools and I let him use a sander, he was so excited! So he started sanding the wood really well and then suddenly he stops and turns to me and says: "I wish Jake was here to see me". Time sopped at that moment I was enjoying every bit of it. The every day little things that we had been able to share with him over the course of his life, went through my mind in an instant. The time that Jake spent with Jeovani, shaped him and Jake wasn´t there to see it. All the loneliness in Jeovani´s life was defeated by the sense of belonging that comes with community. Jeovani knows he´s difficult, that is why he leaves class on his own, four years later and he still has to put away his books every now and then, and go home; but he knows we´ll take him in the next day. These are the Chronicles of the Exiles that had found their place where nobody wants to be and we accompany each other in this journey of hope.
Jeovani is the youngest of four brothers, and he lives with his mother and stepfather. I met him as a little baby and it´s been great to see him grow up. He hasn´t had the happiest childhood I would say, but he is an amazing kid. His parents work most of the day and he spends a lot of his after school time at Club 121 or hanging out with us Youthfornt Croc staff members. We can say Jeovani is one of our regulars, he comes by often and he´s been showing up at our doors since the day he could walk. I remember one summer when he was about 18 months that he would show up after or during the morning meeting and spend all day hanging out at the staff quarters until his mom would come back from work at 6 p.m.. When he started 1st grade, the troubled kid started showing, he did not listened to the teacher and since he was bigger, stronger and smarter than most of the other kids, he would beat them up if they didn´t do what he wanted. He got kicked out of school for the first time at the end of the year; we manage to get him back in school and finish first grade. He also attended club 121, it was a challenge for all of us teachers. I personally had to take him home more than a dozen times, and almost every time he would come back to the church and he´d throw rocks at us from the courtyard. But by the end of the year we were able to come to the agreement that, whenever he was upset he could decide to go home on his own. So almost every day he would put away his books and go home before class was over.
A year later we moved out of the church and rented a house a few houses down Jeovani´s house and he figured it out pretty quickly, so he would show up almost every day to hang out and ask for money. So Jake Taylor (a former staff member) started hanging out with him and soon they became good friends. They would do some carpentry work or bake some banana bread or play board games. One day Jeovani showed up and he asked if we could give him a Bible. Jake told him that if he read a chapter a day and would come to the house and talk about it, he´d get a coke. So he got a Bible and read a chapter (by this time Jeovani was 7 or 8 years old, but he was already a good reader), and the next day, and the day after and so on. They did that for a while, and then Jake left (they keep in touch), and time went by, we still see Jeovani almost every day. 
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